Consumer 5G: user behaviour offers new opportunities, but monetisation at scale is still a work in progress

As 5G adoption grows to more than 1.5 billion connections by the end of this year, the 5G monetisation imperative will escalate. To that end, it is important to understand 5G consumer behaviour and how it has changed as 5G adoption has moved beyond the early adopters. To achieve this, we have drawn upon our latest annual consumer survey (conducted in November/December 2022), which covers eight of the world’s largest telecoms markets, accounting for almost 90% of global 5G connections as of December 2022.

Based on our survey insights we answer 10 important questions on 5G, covering topics such as 5G upgrade intent, 5G consumer experience, 5G ARPU uplift, 5G use cases, 5G bundling, 5G mobile data usage and 5G churn. Looking at the topic of 5G ARPU uplift, for example, we find that consumers who intend to upgrade to 5G are willing to pay extra for their mobile subscription versus what they pay for their current 4G subscription and that this uplift has either slightly increased or remained unchanged compared to 2021. Additionally, we model the impact of 5G on mobile ARPU, analysing it at a regional level, and present several operator case studies from around the globe focused on this aspect.